Kolkata: The state govt will provide home guard jobs to next of kin of 56 people who died and five who were incapacitated — in course of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls, it was decided at a Bengal cabinet meeting on Thursday. Beneficiaries will include families of the 18 booth-level officers (BLOs) who died during the exercise.
The state secretariat had received reports that 56 people had died and five people were incapacitated due to "fear psychosis" surrounding SIR, the govt said.
It added that the state had long advocated supporting families of deceased BLOs but the Bengal chief electoral officer had repeatedly rejected such requests, citing absence of reports from district magistrates confirming that any BLO had died specifically because of SIR workload.